intermission

Time for intermission folks!

meaning: a period during which action temporarily ceases; an interval between periods of action or activity. An interval between parts of a play, film, or concert, blog or 365 project.

synonyms :

interval

interlude

break

recess

pause

rest

respite

breathing space

lull

gap

suspension

let-up

breather

time out

down time

smocko

surcease

quiescense

parenthesis

doldrums

abeyance

postponement

temporarily deferred

interruption to normal services

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Flying Solo Tip 043365 : Give yourself breathing space to last the long haul.

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the dreaded lurgy

I knew on Wednesday, that although I may not have been firing on all cylinders, that my immune system was. Instantly I started a boosted course of cold and flu tablets to ward off the dreaded lurgy. Even when we are on a path of wellness, there are times when we stumble.

Have you ever noticed that when you are not paying proper attention to the most important things that other things in your life start going wrong? It was like that today, just small things and enough for me to pay attention. In the past, my stubbornness would kick in and I would persevere - squashing down the fatigue, swashbuckling the aches and pains away and forcing myself with false resolution to get through it until I had achieved whatever I felt I needed to achieve.

A sign of living with an attitude of wellness is how we deal with the times when we are not well. When my immune system is being bombarded, I am an increased and significant risk of also having to deal with a flare up or relapse in my Multiple Sclerosis. Research suggest that infections are the cause of about one-third of all flares of MS symptoms. From talking to others with similar invisible illnesses and auto-immune diseases like MS, this seems to be a similar trend. Over the years, it also seems that around this time of year, I am more likely to have a relapse than at other times in the year Sometimes I wonder, if my body has memory of the significant trauma when MS decided to present itself in my life in a dramatic fashion eleven years ago.

It is always a conundrum - whether to surrender to being unwell, or to push through with stubbornness. In many respects that conundrum is even more pronounced now that I am flying solo. If I am not working, there is no income to pay the bills ... a stressful situation. If I choose to continue working there is always the lurking fear of knowing that I am putting my health at risk. If I don't take care of myself, I am putting myself at greater health risk that can potentially result in permanent disability. If I choose to look after myself, there is the underlying fear of not being able to pay my weekly or monthly bills and the stress of letting down customers and not meeting commitments. As a workaholic, it is difficult for me to let go off the work commitments, so when I choose to do that (as I did), and to forego my commitments to this blog and other aspects of my life, I do have to give myself some credit for my courage to look after myself and be resolute in not stressing about the things that are not getting done while I do so.

In the final chapter of the book "When the Body Says No : the cost of hidden stress", Gabor Mate discusses the 7 A's of healing. These are :

Acceptance : Acceptance implies a compassionate relationship with oneself. It is the willingness to recognise how this are. It is the courage to permit negative thinking to inform our understanding, without allowing it to define our approach to the future.

Awareness : Awareness involves reclaiming our capacity for emotional intelligence by paying constant attention to our internal states and learning to trust those internal perceptions. We can learn to read the symptoms not only as problems to be overcome but as messages to be heeded.

Anger : The repression of anger and the unregulated acting out of anger are both examples of abnormal release of emotions that is at the root of disease. However it is critical to be able to express healthy anger. The difference between the healthy energy of anger and the hurtful energy of emotional or physical violence is that anger respects boundaries. Healthy anger is the natural response to give us the energy to stand forward on our own behalf and say "I matter".

Autonomy : Illness tells a history. It is the culmination of a lifelong history of struggle for self. People suffer when their boundaries are blurred. Since the immune confusion that leads to disease reflects a failure to distinguish self from non-self, healing has to involve establishing boundaries of an autonomous self.

Attachment : Attachment is our connection with the world. Connection is vital to healing. Healing both required and implies regaining the vulnerability that made us shut down emotionally in the first place.

Assertion : Assertion is the declaration to ourselves and to the world that "we are" and that "we are who we are". Assertion demands neither acting nor reacting. It is being, irrespective of action. It is the positive valuation of ourselves and challenges the core belief that we must somehow justify our existence.

Affirmation : When we make a positive statement, we move toward something of value. There are two basic values that assist us to heal if we honour them. The first is our own creative self, and to honour our creative urges. The second is our affirmation that each of us are connected with all that is. Health rests on three pillars - the body, the psyche and the spiritual connection. Sometimes that means not just looking in the easy places that are convenient, but my challenging our inner most ingrained patterns of thinking and feeling and behaving.

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Flying Solo Tip 041365 : Healing involves re-establishing our boundaries of self mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

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habits of intention

Today I read on a friend's facebook her dismay at having tried on an old swimsuit to find it longer fitted and consoled herself by sitting down to a block of chocolate. We all do it. We have the intention to achieve, to do, to think different, or to break a habit; and at the first hurdle are so discouraged we reinforce the antithesis of our intentions.

In the past weeks, I have eluded to setting intentions. One of my guiding life principles is to live with intent. For me, living with intent is to bring awareness and consciousness to what I do, how I think, feel and behave. For me, an intention is to deliberately act with consciousness. When I looked up the "official definition" of intention today, I learned that in medicine an intention is the healing process of a wound, a manner of healing.

Like my chocolate swimsuit friend, I too lapse in my intended practices. The key is when we lapse is not to stress about the fact that we have lapsed, but as in meditation when stray thoughts enter one's mind, it is to be aware of the thought, allow it to flow rather than hold onto the thought and gently bring ourselves back to our breath.

Habits and addictions are difficult to break. Habits for the most part are unconscious acts - we reach and devour that chocolate bar even before our mind has processed our desire to change. Empirical evidence suggests that it takes up to 21 days to break a habit. Habits are easier to make than they are to break and this has to do with connecting neural pathways in our brain. The brain at it's best performance is lazy, and will use the tried and tested neural pathways and without intent will not form new or different pathways. Relapse into old patterns of behaviour, thinking or feeling are integral to the change process. With each relapse you can actually learn something about yourself that (if noted) can be used to reinforce the changes more succinctly the next time round. It is suggested that long lasting change is most likely when it is self motivated and based in positive thinking. In 2006, the British Economic and Social Research Council through analysis of almost 130 different studies found that the least effective strategies for changer were those based on fear or regret in the person attempting to make the change.

Earlier this year, I was desperately searching for ways to come out of a very low point in my life. When you are clinically depressed and on the verge of a complete mental, physical and emotional breakdown it is extremely difficult to motivate yourself to change. One of the practices I did was to set a daily intention, by doing a meditation and writing the intention down. Throughout the day, I read that intention regularly. Another intention setting exercise I did was around reclamation of self. I have a special intention card on my bathroom mirror. Out of all the rooms in a house, the bathroom is probably the room most centred around routine and habit. Generally, it is not the room we can avoid.

There are four intentions written on that card.

"I am now being well". For regular readers you will know the origins of that phrase.

"I honour my power when I brush my teeth". I had read somewhere at that time that metaphysically, care for our oral health represents taking in of new ideas and nourishment. The mouth is the entry point for the fuel our bodies need to function. Brushing teeth is also a habit - an unconscious and routine act. By linking this statement to an already exisiting positive habit, I felt that perhaps I could accelerate the changes in my thinking, feeling and behaving to reclaim my sense of personal power. Also by setting this intention, and saying that statement in my mind repetitively for as long as I brushed my teeth, I was bringing awareness and deliberate action to a previously unconscious activity. As the weeks past, there were times when I just wanted to go an brush my teeth when I was beginning to doubt my sense of personal power, or felt lack of confidence.

"I rejuvenate my spirit when I take my Vitamin D". I have gone through stages with managing my MS that I have cared for myself by taking Vitamin D supplements. There is some medical research which suggests that by elevating Vitamin D levels, those with MS may be able to alleviate some of the symptoms of the disease. In the past, I have gone through cycles of dedicated practice and complete abstinence. In writing this intent, I felt that if I could link taking Vitamin D (an activity that I want to do more consistently) to a more "noble cause" that I knew I strongly desired rather than just disease management, perhaps my motivation to perform this activity more regularly would improve.

"I appreciate my beauty when I moisturise my face". One of the most significant changes that happens when in a state of depression is the way in which we see ourselves and our world. When our self esteem is low, so is the appreciation for our physical appearance. For various reasons, not related to this post, there have been years in my life that I completely avoided looking at myself in a mirror. In many respects this last intention was the most lofty. Firstly, my self talk related to appreciating my beauty was extremely vulnerable. Secondly, moisturising my face was not a routine activity.

From my experience these past months, I have found that by linking thinking to easy to do or routine behaviours has really helped me to change how I view myself. By linking different ways of thinking to healthy and positive actions I have found that I am more committed to the thinking but also to the behaviours. By linking the actions to a "higher cause", I have found my ability to sustain the change a lot easier and longer before I relapse into less than desirable thinking or behaviours. The longer I am able to sustain the change, the greater chance I am giving myself to successfully rewire and hard wire those neural pathways in my brain to self care and self love.

Now ... here is the irony of today's post. The picture today was completely unintentional. I had planned to take a different image, but during my product shoot this afternoon, I could not resist taking this image. In a way this reinforces the notion that when undergoing personal change, as much as discipline and conscious action is required, we also have to remain open and flexible to whatever life serves us.

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Flying Solo Tip 041365 : Link positive habits to conscious intentions to accelerate personal change.

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